Justin Cooper
Would a sudden layoff be an eye-opening experience that leads you down a new path—such as bartending in the Bahamas? Or would you search for the next cubicle-jockey gig, compromising your soul to uphold an American middle-class lifestyle?
This isn’t a personality test. These are the questions Justin Cooper conjures up in four sculptures, a video about a crazed beast attacking the artist’s studio, roughly 30 drawings and a photo of Cooper surfboarding as a faceless Peter Pumpkinhead. The Chicago artist balances natural and synthetic materials and forms to investigate the generic tropical holiday that “rewards” American workers for maintaining loyalty to their life-sucking corporations.
Cooper’s trademark hardware-store and beach finds—which include wheelbarrows, folding chairs and conch shells—here serve not as objects but as characters. The trunk of Exhausted, a long party-store palm tree, droops on the floor: Like humans, trees eventually dehydrate if left in confined spaces.
The show’s largest sculpture, Leid, suggests the scatterbrained abandon of a beach vacation; its six gigantic plastic leis intertwine like a danceathon of colorful, drunken Hula-hoopers. Climax is an amazing feat of engineering: The artist strategically arranges garden hoses to hoist up four folding chairs at its peak.
Cooper’s quirky, thought-provoking work may not make immediate sense, but his contrasts between flexible and structured objects could inspire a new outlook on the mindfuck that is the American workplace.
